We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

St Mary, Great Chesterton, Oxfordshire

Location
(51°53′17″N, 1°11′5″W)
Great Chesterton
SP 562 214
pre-1974 traditional (England and Wales) Oxfordshire
now Oxfordshire
medieval St Mary
now St Mary
  • Jane Cunningham
  • Janet Newson
20 June 2013

Please use this link to cite this page - https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?i=6294.

Find out how to cite the CRSBI website here.

Description

Chesterton is nearly 2 miles SW of Bicester in E Oxfordshire. St Mary’s church comprises a chancel, a clerestoried nave, N and S aisles, a W tower and a S porch. The transitional N arcade survives from an earlier church, and is composed of three bays with pointed arches, round piers and scalloped capitals. There is a plain Romanesque font at the west end of the nave. The rest of the church was rebuilt in the 13thc.

History

A church is recorded here as paying tithes to Bec Abbey in 1087. A priest, Osmund the Clerk, and his son are mentioned in a mid-12thc. charter, and there is architectural evidence that the church was rebuilt in the 12thc. It was reconsecrated in 1238 after the chancel was rebuilt and the S aisle added.

St Mary's belongs to the Akeman benefice of Bletchingdon, Great Chesterton, Hampton Gay, Kirtlington, Middleton Stoney, Wendlebury and Weston-on-the-Green.

Features

Interior Features

Arcades

Nave

Furnishings

Fonts

Bibliography

J. Sherwood and N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire. Harmondsworth 1974, 617-8.

Victoria County History: Oxfordshire, 6 (1959), 92-103.